Player(55)

My fingers finished the phrase they had been caught in as she silently watched on. Normally, I would have stopped at the first sign of an audience. Normally, I wouldn’t have even entered this room when a woman was in my place. But there I was, playing the symphony no one had heard but me as Val sat at my elbow, her eyes on my fingers and her fingers toying with the tie of my black robe.

The final notes hung in the air, and I let them breathe, let them fill the room and the space between us. And when they finally faded away, I released the keys.

“That…that was beautiful,” she said with an air of wonder, her fingers brushing the edge of the sheet music on the rail. “What’s it called?”

“It doesn’t have a name. No one’s even heard it but you.”

“Why not?”

I shrugged. “It’s not finished. And anyway, I’m just messing around.”

“It’s really good, Sam. I mean it.” She gathered up a few pages and flipped through them. “Seriously, have you ever considered doing something with it?”

I took the pages from her gently and set them back on the stand. “No. I just do it for me.”

“Oh,” she said, threading her hands back in her lap. She glanced around the room. “I didn’t realize you collected instruments.”

“I don’t collect them. I play them.”

Her head swiveled around to meet my eyes. “Are you serious?”

My lips tilted in a smile. “Pick an instrument. Any instrument.”

She turned around on the bench and stood to wander around the room. “The French horn,” she said, pointing at it.

I met her at the horn, took the mouthpiece off, and blew in it a few times, cupping it in my hand to warm it up. Then I popped the piece back on, picked up the instrument, and played a verse of Strauss’s Nocturno, Op. 7 horn solo, slow and haunting. I’d always loved it.

Her eyes widened, but she was smiling. She walked across the room and pointed at the oboe. “This one.”

I chuckled, setting the horn back on its stand before making my way to the oboe. “All right, but you have to gimme a second.” I opened a reed case and popped one in my mouth. “Gotta get this nice and wet.”

She laughed, making her way around the room again, touching some of the instruments. I watched her, followed her fingertips as they traced the brass and wood and string.

I put the reed in its place and brought the instrument to my lips, pursing my lips tight. The opening bars to Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake solo filled the room.

The shock on her face was priceless. “The oboe? No way.”

“Way,” I said as I set it back where it belonged.

“Okay, this one.” She pointed to the guitar. “No way can you also play something badass, too.”

I picked up my Gibson and tuned it, then pretended to fumble through a bit of “Hotel California.” Her face fell a little.

So I dropped the act, plucking out a song I’d written. The notes rose and fell, fast and then slow, the tune both happy and sad, in A-flat major.

Her lips parted, her eyes on my hands as my fingers moved without thought up and down the frets, up and down the strings as I strummed and picked the tune. She sank into the armchair, mesmerized, and there she sat until the song was finished. I set the guitar on its base, uncomfortable with her silence. She was so rarely silent. And I so rarely played for anyone.

I stepped toward her, knelt at her feet. Took her hands in my own. “I’m sorry, Val,” was all I could say.

“Please, don’t apologize.” She took a breath, turned her hands in mine so she could hold them. “You’re incredible, do you know that?”

I huffed a dismissive laugh.

“No, I mean it. Not just because you can play the oboe either.”

Another laugh, this one lighter, the tension between us easing.

“You’re patient and kind. You always have my back, always want my happiness. You’re always telling me what you think of me, and I never listen. But it’s not because I don’t believe your conviction. It’s just hard to imagine that you—beautiful, gorgeous you—could think those things about me. It feels like…like a deal you make with the devil. You might get what you want, but there’s always a catch. The guy gets the girl, but she dies in a car crash. You get all the money he promised you, but you lose all your friends. Your wish was granted, but you’re still not happy. There’s always a catch, Sam, and I just can’t figure out what this one is.”

I frowned, shaking my head. “You’ve idolized me, Val. I’m just a guy, a normal guy.”

“You are anything but normal,” she said on a laugh. “Just…bear with me as I occasionally slip into my crazy pants. I wish I could fake how I feel, pretend not to be insecure or needy, but you see right through me. You always do.”

I slipped my hand into her hair, smelled the mix of vanilla and coconut and my soap, wished I could somehow change how she felt. But that would have changed who she was, fundamentally, irreplaceably.

“Believe me when I say that I think you’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen,” I said to the depths of her eyes and the reaches of her heart, and I meant every word. And I told her so with another kiss.

There were never enough kisses.

She wound around me, twisted into me, and my arms welcomed her, pulled her into my chest as best I could, which wasn’t very well at all. So I stood, bringing her with me. Even through the thick fabric of the robe, I could feel the shape of her body. And I wanted her again. I wanted all of her full of all of me.